Reduce Overhead Due to Network Drive on Raspberry Pi

Problem

We add a line entry to /etc/fstab when Raspberry Pi needs to automatically mount a network drive. The problem with this approach is that:

Raspberry Pi needs to mount the network drive from the point of when booting up to shutting down. In other words, Raspberry Pi has to use CPU and RAM to keep the mount going all the time even when network drive is not needed. This incurs unnecessary expense on the Raspberry Pi. Further more, if the network drive is offline, the Raspberry Pi will complain and demand that you repair before doing anything else.

To avoid the problem above, we don't use /etc/fstab. Instead, we can manually mount a network drive using the mount command. The problem with using the mount command is that the user executing the mount must be ROOT user. However, only one user can be ROOT.

To avoid the ROOT user requirement, you can configure sudo settings to let every other users use the mount. The problem with this approach is that we have to constantly update sudo settings every time we add new users or remove existing ones. You incur administrative cost.

There is a better solution

Solution

The solution is to use an automounter. The automounter automatically mounts only when the directory or files of the network drive is used or needed. The automounter automatically unmounts the network drive after a period of Inactivity thereby eliminating unnecessary overhead. The automounter will mounts for every user and not just for the ROOT user.

The automounter daemon, /usr/sbin/automount is provided by the autofs package